As I continue to deny the crunch of leaves under my feet and ignore the increasingly crisp evenings, I will bring you a few more recipes that grasp at Summer and make the most of the last bins of overripe berries and stone fruit. This recipe can be adapted for any fruit you have handy, I used fresh strawberries and white peach. The strawberries are on their way out but the last few containers I’ve gotten have been super sweet and dirt cheap. I’d better not catch anyone eating these muffins with a Pumpkin Spice Latte! Sacrilege! Down with Fall! ***Don’t forget you still have a few more days to donate to my Kickstarter Campaign, Chill Baby Gourmet Gluten Free Ice Cream Sandwiches!*** Check it out and pass it on to your gluten free friends and family!

Adapted from Lulu at Home. Makes about 16 regular-sized muffins

Wet Ingredients:
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup canola oil
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups gluten free all-purpose flour (I used King Arthur)
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 cup ground hazelnut
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
1 cup chopped fresh white peach, blanched and peeled
(Substitute 2 cups of any fresh or frozen fruit you like)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375F.

Heat a dry, nonstick skillet over medium high heat and pour raw hazelnuts into it.

Toast, shaking the pan occasionally to ensure the nuts don’t burn. When you can smell the hazelnuts and the skins are beginning to fall off the nutmeat, turn off the heat and transfer the nuts unto a fine mesh strainer.

Scrape the nuts against the mesh to remove the skins. When you’ve removed as much of the skin as you can, place the nuts into a food processor and whiz until you have a coarse meal, don’t grind too long or you will end up with hazelnut butter!
In a bowl, whisk together dry ingredients including hazelnut meal.

In another bowl, mix together wet ingredients.

Combine the two bowls and stir together until just blended.  Do not overmix.

Gently fold in chopped fruit.
Scoop each muffin cup with 3/4 full of batter and top with a fresh strawberry slice.

Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Let the muffins cool in the pan for 10 minutes then serve. Muffins keep in an airtight container for about 2-3 days and freeze beautifully.

- 1 lb. container fresh strawberries (16 oz)
- 1 lb. container fresh blueberries (16 oz)
- 2 containers raspberries (8oz each)
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 4 tbsp anejo tequila (adjust to taste but don’t over-do it)
- juice of one lime

Start by zesting your time and setting the zest aside for your whipped cream.
Hull and slice strawberries

Slightly muddle or gently smash blueberries with a fork (leave mostly intact, you just want to rough em up a bit so they can absorb some tequila)

Mix strawberries and blueberries and add raspberries
Spoon sugar over mixture and stir gently
Add tequila and lime juice and stir gently
Refrigerate at least two hours, up to 24, stirring once every hour.
Serve with lime whipped cream

- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
- zest of one lime
- 6 Tbsp granulated sugar

Measure sugar into a small bowl then zest lime into the sugar. Mix and refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.
Put mixing bowl and beaters in freezer until ready use but at least 30 minutes. Fill a large bowl halfway with ice and a little water. Place a smaller metal bowl on top of the ice water in the bowl and pour the cream into the smaller metal bowl. Using electric beaters or a whisk (you must have major muscles and stamina to do it old skool, a whisk attachment for electric hand beaters is ideal) whip/whisk until stiff peaks begin to form. Add sugar mixture and whip until you have light, fluffy whipped cream. DO NOT OVER-WHIP or you will make lime flavored, oily butter. Yech.

Spoon berry mixture into a bowl or goblet and top with whipped cream. This recipe is insanely good and the tequila is very subtle, not at all knock-you-on-your-butt alcohol-y.

Lately I’ve been craving rhubarb. I grew up with a rhubarb patch in my backyard. I generally ate it raw, yanking a stalk out of the ground, rinsing it and munching away. For those who are not familiar with it, it looks a lot like swiss chard or collard greens but with a thicker stalk. The leaves are poisonous but the stalk is perfectly edible and has the texture of celery and a sour/bitter taste like nothing else in the world. Truly singular. I was lucky enough to find the very last rhubarb of the season at the Santa Monica farmers market so I snatched it up along with some small, sweet gaviota strawberries.

I devised a strawberry rhubarb crisp to serve as dessert after a cedar plank salmon and rice dinner. I made all this for a group of friends who were kind enough to act as recipe guinea pigs while I dusted off my apron in the new kitchen.

- 4 cups strawberries, hulled and quartered
- 3 cups rhubarb cut into 1/4″ – 1/3″ pieces
- 2 1/2 tbsp corn starch
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice (I used a Meyer lemon for more flavor)
- 1 tsp. lemon zest
- pinch of sea salt
Topping
- 1 1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Biscuit and Baking Mix
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 stick unsalted butter

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix fruit with corn starch, sugar, lemon juice and zest and the sea salt. Allow mixture to sit for 20 – 30 minutes.

Mix flour mixture and brown sugar. Melt butter and add to dry ingredients mixing with a fork.

Place fruit in baking dish and top with the crisp ingredients, spreading the pasty mixture across the top so that no large holes remain

Bake for 40 minutes or until the juice begins to bubble up through the crust and the crust is browning at the edges

Serve warm with ice cream (I used Haagen Dazs Five in Brown Sugar flavor. It was PERFECT!)